Flame retardant shows up in Arctic

A HOUSEHOLD chemical widely used in TVs, toasters, cushions and curtains has turned up in polar bears in the Arctic. The flame retardant's toxicity is still disputed, but campaigners claim it is becoming one of our most pervasive and troubling industrial chemicals.

Deca-bromodiphenyl ether (deca-BDE) is added to dozens of household commodities. But green campaigners say it should be classed with DDT, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and dioxins, and banned from use.

Last week, scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Oslo announced that they had found traces of deca-BDE in the body fat of polar bears and gulls on Svalbard, a Norwegian Arctic archipelago hundreds of kilometres from any major sources of the compound. Geir Wing Gabrielsen, the institute's head of toxicology, says the discovery shows that the compound persists in the environment and, like PCBs and DDT, can be carried by winds and currents to remote regions, where it ...

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